


if i only had a rowboat

by sinteresting_facts



Category: Original Work, World of Warcraft
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Blood Magic, Demisexuality, Explicit Language, Gender Issues, Graphic discussion of Rape and rape recovery, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Memory Loss, Past Sexual Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Self-Doubt, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Hatred, please heed warnings! this is dark!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-18
Updated: 2019-02-18
Packaged: 2019-10-31 01:50:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17840126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinteresting_facts/pseuds/sinteresting_facts
Summary: A look at how Aatto's dealt with things over the years.





	if i only had a rowboat

**Author's Note:**

> Sex, Rape, and sexuality are discussed bluntly in this fic, however, it is in no way written to be pornographic material.

Aatto could remember bits and pieces of that night: him inside her, her forcing herself onto him, her blood coating the two of them as he desperately tried to heal it. He’d been naive. He always had been, he supposed. 

 

Sex had never felt important to him, really. It was nothing more than something fun to do if someone had taken an interest in him. It was an obligation: a pleasurable chore. He only remembered falling in love once.   
  
Now, he cared about sex. He cared about touch. He cared about intimacy. A lingering hug had a time limit; a too-long glance became a warning sign. A flirtatious remark made his gut curl.

 

_ It didn’t matter, _ he thought. It’d been a miscalculation, a mistake. It was something far removed from him as a person. He was not raped. He had not been raped. That's what he told himself. 

 

–

 

He didn’t usually think about anything when he masturbated, if he ever even did. But on those few occasions when he was bored and felt hot and nothing seemed right, he did think of that night. He thought of her forcing him to strip; of him trying to flirt, trying to make it easier–trying to make it go faster. He thought of her ripping his stomach open and infecting him with Corruption and still not letting him be in peace. He thought of letting her do this to him. 

  
He hated it. He absolutely hated it. He came and thought of how disgusting it was that he thought of that night. He didn’t think of the harm done to him, only the abstract of what he did.

  
As if he was not the one whose body was turned against him. As if he was not the one left with the scars.

 

He thought about the smell of woodsmoke, and he felt sick.

–

 

“Good boy.”    
  
Was he a boy? He hadn’t been for many thousands of years if he could guess, not since he was a child. 

 

Was he a man? He had always assumed so. He certainly was a man when he had taken his lover to bed all those many years ago. He certainly had been a man when she begged him to kiss her breasts, and to come deep inside her. He had most certainly been a man when he’d talked with her about the likelihood that she could be with child. He was also a man when he brewed up a potion, extra strong at her request. She didn’t regret it, she bedded him many times in the coming months. He enjoyed it because he enjoyed her. 

 

She came to ask for a little vanilla and sugar in her potions, so regularly did she take them.    
  
That was barely more than a wisp of a memory now. The bombs had shaken all but his basest identity out of him.

 

Time and therapy brought him back to life. His father made sure of that. Aatto was a man when his father told him he was to marry the woman he’d been courting. Aatto was a man when he spoke with her the next day, and parted from her. He couldn’t marry.    
  
Aatto had not felt like a man when his father exploded at him the next day, or even like a person really. He’d felt like a child–a sapling, devoid of anything except for the purpose of his fruits which he’d yet to grow.    
  


Was he a man?

  
  


Was he a man when he preened upon being called beautiful? Was he a man in those moments when his gut would pull at the mention of his name? Was he a man when he fought the urge to roll his eyes when his father referred to him as an’dore _. Son. _

  
He didn’t know what being a man was.    
  
He wasn’t a boy. He wasn’t a man.

He wasn’t a woman either, but sometimes there was the longing.    
  
Peering into a mirror and seeing his bare chest, flat and dimpled where his ribs became wooden beneath his skin, filled him with a fleeting dread. Was he a man then? He didn’t know. He didn’t dare to ask.    
  


–

 

Kay.    
  
He hadn’t learned his lesson. He was too trusting. Aatto had always been this way.   
  
Twice he’d ventured out to save a fallen soldier. Twice he’d tread upon a trap, only to see the man in need go up in the very same flames he did.    
  
Twice he’d pushed his luck too far. Twice he was assaulted.    
  
Perhaps losing the centuries of experience had broken him. Perhaps his wisdom, now only available through snippets of scattered memories, was useless. Perhaps he was obsolete. But he’d saved them, hadn’t he? Had he not saved countless people over a lifetime? Perhaps he couldn’t save himself, but that would be alright, in the end.   
  


–

 

_ “Don’t take this the wrong way, but…” _

  
Thorenthael had cleaned his neck so gently. He didn’t mind the fur matted with blood, nor the sickly, disgusting crimson that stained his fur magenta. Aatto had bared his neck to him, knowing not to be difficult when someone was fussing over a wound. Thoren had leaned back, for only a moment.    
  
_ “...You look pretty cute like this.”  _ __   
  
Aatto’s veneer of control had shattered.

 

‘ _ Oh _ .’ is what he’d thought.

 

“I’m sorry,” is what he’d said aloud.

 

Was he pretty sitting here––a half-drained blood bag––, shivering a barely able to move? Was he cute sitting here, nothing more than a pile of timber? Was he cute, sitting here, at the mercy of the man before him, who had magic that surely could bend him to his will?    
  
He was vulnerable, but he was pretty. He was cute. 

He was a good boy.

He knew why Schaelarche hated that phrase so much, now.

It meant you were weak. You were beautiful. You were placid. 

 

He was tired, and oh how he wished he could be anything but.   
  
He couldn’t fight the fear, so he cried. He threw himself into repairing his legs, he just needed to do  _ something.  _ He had no capacity for magic–hadn’t the blood for it–though he tried anyway. He wouldn’t be left for dead again...he couldn’t bear that. 

  
He fell unconscious.     



End file.
